Progress!

Just wanted to share a quick "before" and "after" shot of the apartment. I took these on my cell phone, so it's not the best quality, but it does show a huge difference in the place! We laid the floor in the bedroom and the den, so we are down to finishing touches in 3 rooms. Our last big project is the bathroom- that's going to take some work! We have to lay flooring down in the kitchen, too, but we're getting closer to being done! Hopefully we'll be moving in by Halloween weekend.

The living room "before"- note the awful maroon color on the walls, and the painted cement floor that is Christmas green.

And, the living room "after"- we kept the cement floor in here because of the occasional water that comes in when it rains hard, but we painted it brown, which helps it look less like cement, and more like a real floor.

Like I said, we still have a lot of work to do, but it is so nice to finally see real progress on the place! I'll post more pictures once we are completely done.

Dear Meaghan,



Didn't we just have one of these heart-to-hearts just last week? Another reminder for you- never, ever agree to move into an apartment that needs to be renovated before you can live in it! EVER!!

Love,
Yourself

Well, week 2 in Nashville and we are still staying at Will's dad place. Last week, we decided to rent the walkout basement apartment that is below Will's dad's office for a very cheap price. At the time, it seemed like a great decision. Cheap rent = saving lots of money and being able to buy a place once the economy turns around. We did not, however, plan on having to completely renovate the place before we could live there!

The apartment has real potential to be a cute place. But there is just soooo much work that has to be done. The previous tenants have not done much to take care of it- it smelled musty, was terribly dirty, and had at least a couple years' worth of "stuff" sitting around in closets. And the I took last week off so we could dedicate whole days to renovating. We have put in more than a few 12 hour days and finally we are starting to see some progress. We have ripped out carpet and linoleum, and painted EVERY surface of the apartment, most ceilings included. We've caulked, replaced baseboards, scrubbed the fridge, cleaned out drawers and closets. And the annoying part of the whole thing is that we don't even plan to live here long! It's a LOT of work to put into a place we plan to only live in for several months. Oh, and the main room was painted an awful, awful Maroon purple. Seriously? Who paints a room that way? Ugh.

It rained really hard all last night and this morning we walked in and found huge puddles of water in the main room and bathroom. Sigh. It never ends. The minute we get kind of excited about the place when we can see progress, we end up taking a couple steps back. We think the gutters were clogged so the water had nowhere else to go. I hope that is all it is!

OK, I'm going to keep this post short because I feel some bitching coming on and a blog is no place to bitch. That's what phones are for- to call my mom and bitch instead. :) Seriously, though, we are doing our best to be patient and make the best of the situation. Will and I take turns reminding each other (when one of us breaks out into a frustrated and exhausted tantrum) that financially this is a great decision, and we are really helping his dad increase the value of the property by doing this. Hopefully my next post will be a happy one from my cute, cozy new basement apartment!